


The Man in the Window

by ronans



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, M/M, post 5x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-08
Updated: 2015-06-08
Packaged: 2018-04-03 10:55:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4098352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronans/pseuds/ronans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It looks like there’s a man in the window, but on second glance he’s gone. Ian doesn’t even want to contemplate the idea that he imagined him, even more so because the figure had looked like Mickey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man in the Window

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so you probably don't want to read something like this but this is the first inspiration to write I've had in weeks so... ha  
> I got some of the inspiration from a tumblr post I saw but I can't remember which one?? ugh, if you've seen it you'll know which part I'm on about

It looks like there’s a man in the window, but on second glance he’s gone. Ian doesn’t even want to contemplate the idea that he imagined him, even more so because the figure had looked like Mickey.

Ian blinks, shakes his head, and starts back up the pace he’d stopped. There had been no real reason for stopping; he wonders why he did it.

It’s a quiet morning and Ian’s alone, something that rarely seems to happen anymore. They’re always watching him. They’re probably waiting for him to fuck up, for the eggshells to finally crunch under all of their careful steps. He knows that when that happens, when everything shatters, the sound will be deafening. So loud for something so fragile.

In the mornings when his limbs hurt from staying still, he waits before dawn and checks each small or large snore off on his mental list of siblings. Fiona’s is the hardest to count because she doesn’t make much noise but he’s learned to pick up on it. When they’re all fast asleep, he’ll finally be able to escape. They wonder why he sleeps in all day. They ask him if he needs to see the doctor again.

Ian has to keep telling himself that his brothers and sisters love him and that they want what’s best for him. It’s hard to ignore the niggling thoughts in his head that say _but they didn’t look for you when you were missing._ He knows who did, but he manages to stop the thoughts before they land on a name and face. Ian never quite manages to block out the blue eyes, though.

He thrives in silence and noise equally. It’s the timing that does it. Right now, his siblings (and the chaos that inevitably comes with them) are always impeding on his need to be calm, his need to float in peace.

Ian doesn’t think they understand when they’re sure they do. He hates that certainty that they have that what they know is best, their rules are the ones that should stick. He looks back and it’s months later now and he thinks that what he said to Mickey was wrong.

Fuck, now he’s thinking about him. He’s walking along the trash littered sidewalk and it’s not the right place to be thinking about him without him there, but he is and he can’t help it. Scrubbing his hands across his face like that’ll wipe his mind clean doesn’t work and it never has done before, he’s got no idea why he thought it’d work this time.

It’s on a loop. Mickey’s face after he’d kissed him. Mickey’s face after he’d held him. Mickey’s face after he’d thrown awful words at it and cut up everything they were and wanted to be with the sharpness of them.

He kicks a plastic bottle and it’s loud. It hurts. It’s not a nice sound, it’s melodic in an ugly way and he thinks that’s maybe how his voice sounded to Mickey the last time he saw him.

Scuffing his shoes, dragging his feet. He feels weighed down with how fucked up he’s made this. He’s made himself worse and he _ruined_ them. He’s had the time to replay everything and along with that has had the time to over analyse.

Maybe he’d never wanted what he’d thought, though. Maybe the idea of the goal had been nicer than having it. What was the saying? You always want what you can’t have. Maybe that’s Ian. Maybe that’s what he wanted. To get it and move on. The moving on part’s not as pretty as he’d envisioned, though.

He’s stopped again at the end of a cul-de-sac. There’s nowhere else to go from here but back the way he came. Deep breaths, shallow breaths, in, out.

‘ _I love you_.’

That had been what he’d said, hadn’t it? Right before the wedding vows, recited like he’d been practicing them in his head. Fuck, he probably had done. When Ian had been asleep, when Ian had been at work, he’d been thinking about them.

‘ _Who gives a shit, it’s a fucking piece of paper.’_

_‘Not… to… me…’_

In his head, his voice is slowed down and murky, kind of like listening to something underwater. He sounds so different. He’d been hopeful and broken, and that had been Mickey in the end. Mickey’d thought that about Ian.

He realises he’s been standing in the same spot at the end of the street for far too long and his eyes are damp and his arms are cold. He sniffs and blinks and breathes. He’s got to get used to this and maybe along the way he’ll actually learn to stop thinking.

*

It looks like there’s a man in the window, but on second glance he’s gone. Mickey doesn’t even want to contemplate the idea that he imagined him, even more so because the figure had looked like Ian.

The gaps, the spaces in time where he’s on his own come far too often. He hates that his cheek still feels warm from Ian’s lips. Maybe he walks in the cold hoping it’ll freeze it. The memory will still be there but it’ll stay just that – a memory – and he can move the fuck on with his life.

He’s drunk, doesn’t know when he’s ever not anymore. He hates it.

It’s like a fog, or a ghost, that he’s trying to drown in alcohol but it’s clutching at his arms saying _you used to have someone here, you used to feel them._ He absolutely hates it. He hates Ian the ghost, he hates Ian the poltergeist. Well, that’s what Ian seems to him now. He could be Mickey’s nightmare. He did enough damage to make himself one, seeped poison into happy thoughts.

He hates that Ian invaded any good memories and turned them into something else. Mickey’s paranoid now that the happiness wasn’t real, that maybe Ian had been taunting and mocking him the entire time. The worst of looking back on everything is some of Ian’s words can exactly match his father’s and that kind of echo and parallel is even more vile. He’d never loved his father but, fuck, he’d loved Ian.

Mickey can’t sift through the jumbled thoughts anymore, has given up trying to make sense of them. Thoughts of Ian now come in a tangled wave; they’re good and bad and make him ache and he used to enjoy aching for Ian, now he loathes it.

Through this, though, there’s still that stupid fucking feeling of want. He wants Ian. Even when all his memories are tainted and he looks at them with shit tinted glasses now, he still wants it all back and more.

 _‘Good times, bad-‘_ Really? He can’t think of the good anymore but he desperately wants it back.

 _‘Sickness, health-‘_ He’d known. He’d fucking known all about what was wrong with Ian, had seen it first hand and was willing to try to deal with it and just be there. But trying wasn’t enough and Ian didn’t want him anymore. Ian didn’t want him at his best even when he had a host of worsts to compare it to.

He wants to sit with Ian and laugh about all this – what had he been scared about? Why had he hidden himself away for so long? But it’s this. This is exactly what he’d been scared of. Ian seeing him, _all_ of him, and _then_ walking away. Watching Mickey blossom right before his eyes just to suddenly hate the changing seasons. Mickey'd truly believed Ian had wanted and asked for summer, but he’d only been willing to stick through the winters.

Mickey reaches a fork in the road and wonders which direction he should take. He’s close to home but that also means he’s close to the Gallagher house. Before, he’d walk one way to see Ian. He remembers times, before the ultimatums, before they’d started sharing a bed, where he’d light up a cigarette and just stroll past the house knowing that Ian was in there and he’d so badly wanted to go in, to ask if he’d want to hang out or some shit excuse like that just to mask the pure want. He’d never done it. It used to be a ridiculous idea to even entertain. When he was younger, Mickey hadn’t even spared a thought towards being with Ian like that, nor what was to come.

Nor what was to fall.

Even when the feeling of rejection’s still fresh and going strong, he thinks that maybe, if he keeps up with his walks in the morning, he’ll bump into someone, someone he knows, someone he’s loved. He thinks that maybe they’ll say hello to each other and look over each other’s covered bodies with darting gazes. But there’s also a chance he’ll keep on walking. Mickey doesn’t like that outcome much.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://southsidemilkovich.tumblr.com)


End file.
